Greater Hungary (political Concept)

Greater Hungary (political Concept)

Greater Hungary (Hungarian: Nagy-Magyarország) is the informal name of the territory of Hungary before the 1920 Treaty of Trianon. After 1920, between the two World Wars, the official political goal of Hungary was to restore those borders. After World War II, Hungary abandoned this policy, and today it only remains the political goal of small marginalized groups of Hungarian revisionists. The Treaty of Trianon redefined the borders of Hungary so that it lost about 72% of its territory and about two-thirds of its inhabitants, almost 3 million people of Hungarian ethnicity. In its foreign policy, Hungary was seeking the revision of the peace treaty: this policy insulated it politically in the 1920s and pushed it towards Hitler's Germany in the 1930s.

The arguments of Hungarian revisionists for their goal were: the presence of Hungarian majority areas in the neighbouring countries, historical traditions of the approximately 1000-year-old Hungarian Kingdom, or the geographical unity and economic symbiosis of the region within the Carpathian Basin, although some Hungarians preferred to regain only ethnically Hungarian majority areas surrounding Hungary.

Hungary, supported by the Axis Powers, was partially successful in peacefully gaining some (mostly ethnic Hungarian) regions of the former Kingdom in the Vienna Awards of 1938 and 1940, and also with military force gained regions of Carpathian Ruthenia in 1939 and (ethnically mixed) Bačka and Baranja, Međimurje, and Prekmurje in 1941. Following the end of World War II, the borders of Hungary as defined by the Treaty of Trianon were restored, except 3 more Hungarian villages were given to Czechoslovakia. These villages are part of Pozsony (today Bratislava). Historical revisionism was often used by both proponents and opponents of Greater Hungary. Today, almost a century after the Treaty of Trianon, some Hungarians still feel nostalgic for the old Hungarian Kingdom, but outright territorial revisionism remains a marginalized political position.